Boies & Olson Rally to Vaughn Walker’s Defense

Will he or won’t he be recused? That is the question that has circled for weeks around Vaughn Walker, the judge who struck down California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.

Walker, as perhaps the entire legal community knows, recently disclosed that he is gay, which caused the supporters of Prop 8. to claim he should be disqualified since he possibly had a personal interest in the outcome of the case.

What is that interest? That he might want to marry his partner and would thus benefit from his ruling invalidating Prop 8, which is now on appeal before the 9th Circuit.

Today, David Boies and Ted Olson, who successfully represented gay couples in overturning Prop 8, filed a motion that called the recusal effort groundless, the AP reports.

There is no “factual basis to assume that Judge Walker wishes to marry…and [the movants] instead rely on nothing more than the fact that he is gay, in a relationship with a person of the same sex,” the attorneys wrote.

The brief continues: “In fact, under proponents’ reasoning, African-American and female judges would have been required to recuse themselves in the most important civil rights cases in American history and all judges would be required to disclose their most private thoughts and relationships in order to preside over any case that involves constitutional rights they might conceivably want to secure for themselves and their families.”

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